We Just Found Someone Who Knew Facebook's CFO David Ebersman When He Was In High School...

David Ebersman, CFO
-- the closest to Mark Zuckerberg most Facebook investors are
ever going to get.

Facebook's CFO, David Ebersman, is one of the most respected
executives I've ever asked about.

I haven't met Ebersman personally yet, but in the context of
doing some research on Facebook, I asked a lot of people about him.

And they love the guy!

Specifically, here's what they told me:

A former Wall Street analyst, Ebersman worked for 15 years at
biotech giant Genentech before he joined Facebook in 2009.
Competition for the Facebook CFO slot was fierce, but after
meeting Ebersman, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg knew he had found who he
was looking for.

For starters, like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Ebersman was young—39 at
the time—which meant that he might be around for a while
(Facebook didn't want a CFO who wanted to cash in on the IPO as a
final lucrative career stop and then bolt). Second, he understood
how important Facebook’s culture and sense of mission were,
because Genentech had shared the same qualities. Third, prior to
being promoted to CFO at Genentech, Ebersman had been in an
operating role, so he wasn’t just a numbers guy—rather, he knew
how finance could serve the rest of the organization. Fourth,
like Sheryl Sandberg, he was already wealthy, so he wasn’t just
looking for a quick score from the IPO.

Ebersman pitches
the IPO. Click image for highlights

Ebersman also had other qualities that appealed to Facebook. He
plays bass in a band called “Feed Bomb,” which apparently gives
him cred with Facebook’s engineers. He’s described as smart and
unflappable:

“In a sea of craziness, a colleague says, 'even the way he talks
is cool. It always feels like there’s a there’s a
quarter-second pause before he answers… because it feels like
he’s deliberating.'"

So that was all good.

Then, today, I was chatting with someone who I learned knew
Ebersman in high school--at Trinity in New York.

So I asked what Ebersman was like back then.

Here's the answer I got:

Serious,
smart, great at math, emotionally detached. Conversationally
challenged but a nice kid, unthreatening in that way that can
make high-school boys popular with girls. He was
Zuckerbergian, actually -- I was so not surprised when he went to
Facebook.